Survivor: Racism and Misogyny

I used to love Survivor. I was a glued to my seat watcher for years. Until the networks became pay to play and I no longer had access to the show.

Recently I subscribed to Paramount Plus because I wanted to have access to all the Star Trek shows and I wanted to check out Matlock. And there was Survivor.

I was thrilled. I decided to start watching the first season they filmed during the pandemic. What a choice. That season was fine but the following season the shit hit the fan. There were a number of black players and the first time on Survivor the black players decided to team up. 

And they imploded. And then got picked off. And then some real talk started happening. And the absolute patriarchal undertone of the show came to light (at least for me, smarter people probably recognized this long ago).

Survivor begins as teams. The teams compete, one team loses the competition and they go to Tribal Council where someone gets voted off the island. And it goes that way until the tribes merge and people play as individuals and start picking people off.

And the pecking order becomes the same every time. The first to go are the black women. Constantly. The white women and black men are fine with that. Then when there are no more black women they kick out the young women. When the tribes merge then they continue to target the younger women and the younger black men.Then the older women and older black men.

Do some people survive this? Of course. Some players find ways to stay. A black woman can (and has) won. But watch the damn shows as a binge and the patterns suddenly scream out.

And I found that I can't watch the show because I hate it now. Survivor is America in a nutshell. Racist, sexist, obvious and mean.